Gulf War assessments speak to this, too, noting examples of enemy fire bouncing off its armor and the A1 being able to take multiple hits while still dealing damage.Ī lot of the American tank's strength comes from its design. Edmonds said that one of the best qualities of the A1 is its survivability, which comes from its armor and design, he added. It proved agile in a variety of terrains, often setting the pace of movement and battle.īut the tank proved to be a defensive presence just as much as an offensive threat. "The M1A1 was designed to very rapidly hit multiple targets at long range," Edmonds said. Past testimonies from tank crews said the 120mm gun, turret, and firing computer were sophisticated, but Edmonds said much of the tank's combat power boiled down to highly-accurate kinetic energy sabot rounds equipped with depleted uranium shells. "I think that where the benefit comes from is the accuracy and power of the round." "In a standoff between the two, I would not want to be in the T-72," Jeffrey Edmonds, a former US Army armor officer and a Russia expert at the Center for Naval Analyses, told Insider. Crews praised their reliability, and they were particularly lethal against Iraq's Soviet-era tanks, such as the T-72s that Russia is currently employing in Ukraine. But the decision may still get Kyiv the firepower it needs, as the older tanks have a track record of defeating Soviet-era tanks like the ones Russia keeps sending into combat.Īccording to some early performance reports from the first Gulf War, America's M1A1 tanks were a formidable and invaluable asset on the battlefield. Washington is fast-tracking the delivery of Abrams tanks to Ukraine, opting to send older M1A1 models instead of the newer M1A2s to get them there sooner.
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